User:Polscimajor

Public Opinion

Lead: One of the struggles of public opinion is how it can be influenced by misinformation.

Misinformation
According to the Social Science Research Council, "We are in the midst of a perfect storm of misinformation, where the wrong information or lack of it can be deadly." Cognitive psychologists such as Lewandowsky et al. have defined misinformation as "any piece of information that is initially processed as valid but is subsequently retracted or corrected." There are two common types of misinformation according to Hochschild, a political scientist. There are inactive informed and active misinformed. Inactive informed is when one knows the right information but chooses to ignore it. Active misinformed is when one believes incorrect information and uses that incorrect information. People can move from active misinformed to active informed by being presented with information in ways that persuade them in an impactful way.

Social Media Misinformation
Social Media affects public opinion as content that is created and shared can affect how individuals form an opinion on societal issues. According to Ambassador (ret.) Karen Kornbluh, senior fellow and director of the Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative at the German Marshall Fund, Social Media has led to misinformation through radicalization to extremism. Social media platforms such as TikTok and YouTube recommend content that has the potential to spread misinformation due to the way their content algorithms are set up. Content that is more inflammatory tends to get sent out to users as it keeps them more engaged. This also allows far-right groups to coordinate and raise funds more easily.

Public Health Misinformation
Public Health issues have become areas of misinformation within the public opinion field. According to the National Library of Medicine, "Misinformation can have negative effects in the real world, such as amplifying controversy about vaccines and propagating unproven cancer treatments." Medical misinformation has been relevant to changing public opinion in cases such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Originally, a myth was circulated that AIDS could be spread by touching people who were infected. This had implications for public opinion in regard to AIDS policies as the misinformation around the illness led to support for restrictive policies for people infected with HIV. Vaccines have also had health misinformation associated with it. According to the National Library of Medicine, misinformation has led people to take household disinfectants, such as hydroxychloroquine, as they thought it would help to treat Covid-19. The CDC performed a survey and found that out of 502 adults, 39% of respondents performed unsafe activities in order to treat COVID-19.